I seriously underestimated the extent of my own decadence: I kept frittering away the time until there were barely more than two days left before I even started reading. I also seriously underestimated the difficulty of turning a reading report into prose, dragging it out until the evening of the last day before I began to write. I also seriously underestimated my ability to ramble, so that by §24 I had already run up some 4,500 characters, and when I looked at the clock it was already deep into the night. There was no time to ramble any further, and even if I finished rambling now, there would still not be time to present it in class tomorrow, so I had no choice but to begin with a tiger’s head and end with a snake’s tail; the last five sections together amount to only 2,000 characters…
Schopenhauer Reading Report
What I am reporting on is §§24–29, that is, the second half of the second part. Let me first say that among the many things mentioned in this section, some have already been touched on earlier—for example, the thing-in-itself, natural force, the limits of science, and so on. These were all mentioned before and are only being repeated or further developed here. Just by chance, the previous classmate’s report did not cover that section, so my report will also touch on material already discussed earlier in the book. On the other hand, this part also serves in many places as a foundation and preview for the latter half of the whole book. There are some concepts, such as Plato’s Ideas, that will be discussed in detail later. I may therefore talk a bit less about those questions now, leaving them for the classmates who report later to unfold—though, of course, the main reason is that I myself have not really read the later passages yet.
At the end of §23, Schopenhauer indicates the question to be discussed: if we have used “will” to designate that “thing-in-itself,” then what we need to explain is why “in inorganic natural phenomena and the will (as we apprehend it)” “seem on the surface to be entirely different.” Natural phenomena exhibit completely fixed regularity, with not the slightest trace of individuality, whereas human individuality seems to be the opposite extreme. Schopenhauer says: “In order to explain this clearly, in order to point out the identity of a single indivisible will in all its different phenomena, in the weakest as in the most prominent phenomena, we must first examine the relation of the will as thing-in-itself to the phenomenon, that is, of the world as will to the world as representation; thereby the best path will be opened to us for a more thorough investigation of the whole subject treated in this second part.” (§23 end: 176) This is the main problem that will be explained starting from §24.
The very first sentence of §24 is “following the great Kant,” and, as has already been mentioned many times earlier, Schopenhauer fully agrees with Kant’s view that time, space, and causality are forms of the subject’s cognition rather than properties of the thing-in-itself. Like Kant, Schopenhauer from the outset repeatedly emphasizes that “the inner essence of the world, the thing-in-itself, can never be discovered by way of the principle of sufficient reason.” (for example, §7: 65) He also repeatedly emphasizes later that will is precisely that which cannot be traced back further, is groundless, and obeys no explanation whatsoever (e.g. §§24: 179, 183, and so on). Schopenhauer’s thing-in-itself is basically the thing-in-itself in the full Kantian sense—that is, the essence behind phenomena, beyond the reach of human cognition. Schopenhauer’s “thing-in-itself” likewise refers to that unknowable “essence.” Right at the beginning, Schopenhauer explicitly says that the world as representation is the world’s “knowable” side (§1: 27); in other words, the world as will is its “unknowable” side. Thus, to take will as the thing-in-itself is still fully consistent with Kant’s use of the thing-in-itself. The fundamental aim of Kant’s doctrine of the thing-in-itself is actually to “set limits to knowledge,” that is, to reveal the limits of natural science; Schopenhauer’s work also unfolds on the basis of repeatedly stressing the limits of science. He says several times that “where science stops, philosophy (/metaphysics) begins” (for example, §§15: 129, 130).
But Kant only emphasizes the negative significance of the thing-in-itself—namely, its function of setting limits to knowledge—without going on to discuss the thing-in-itself “positively.” Schopenhauer, by contrast, boldly declares that “only will is the thing-in-itself.” (§21 end: 165) It should be noted that this can be said to be Schopenhauer’s daring advance on Kant’s doctrine of the thing-in-itself rather than a departure from it. For while emphasizing that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, Kant did leave room for metaphysics concerning the thing-in-itself. Kant put it like this: “We can have no knowledge of any object as thing-in-itself, but only insofar as it is the object of sensible intuition, that is, as phenomenon; from this it indeed follows that all knowledge of speculative reason is confined solely to objects of experience. Nevertheless, we must note that even here there remains always a reservation, namely, that these same objects, precisely as things-in-themselves, we may indeed not know, but must at least be able to think. For otherwise there would follow the absurd proposition that there is appearance without something that appears.” [BXXVI]
Why do people always want to ask about essence from phenomena, and insist on positing something as thing-in-itself? Kant also understood very well that natural science can develop perfectly well without positing a thing-in-itself; the problem is that people will never be satisfied with science alone. People need metaphysics. Kant says, “To pretend to be indifferent to such inquiries [metaphysics] is futile, since their object cannot be indifferent to human nature. Those ostensible cool-headed people, however much they may try to make themselves unrecognizable by turning academic language into a popular tone, will inevitably come back to the metaphysical claims they once affected to despise the moment they think of something anywhere.” [AX]
As Schopenhauer repeatedly emphasizes, we not only need to know how things are; we also need to grasp why they are so (this is mentioned, for example, already in §15: 118). What we need is not merely perfect formulas and precise prediction; we need even more to “understand” them, to long to grasp essence and meaning. Earlier, Schopenhauer had already said: “What now drives us to inquiry is precisely that we cannot be satisfied with knowing that we have representations, knowing that representations are this way or that, linked by this or that law, knowing that the principle of sufficient reason is the total form of those laws, and so on. We cannot rest content with this; we want to know the meaning of those representations; we ask whether this world, besides being representation, is nothing more; and if so, then as it passes before me it must necessarily be like an unsubstantial dream, like a ghostly mirage, and unworthy of a glance.” (§17: 149) In §24, he once again emphasizes (as he does in many places throughout the book): “If the objects appearing in these forms are not empty illusions but have a meaning, then these objects must be something signified, must be the manifestation of something…” (§24: 177)
Schopenhauer then says that, for the moment, we should “set aside what the thing-in-itself is” (§24: 177). He first criticizes the approach of modern natural science, points out its fundamental limitations, and then proposes that only if philosophy “goes the other way” can it possibly satisfy our purpose.
So what is the fundamental limitation of modern natural science? As Schopenhauer says, it “determines only the ‘how’ of phenomena, not the ‘what’; it cares only for form, not for content.” (§24: 180) Schopenhauer precisely describes the aim of modern science—“to try to reduce all organic life to chemical processes or electrical processes; then to reduce all chemical processes to mechanical processes… to reduce them to geometrical objects… and finally geometry itself may be reduced to arithmetic…” (§24: 181)
Schopenhauer calls this ideal “a crude materialism newly concocted out of ignorance.” Schopenhauer says that, leaving aside for the moment the fact that this (reductionist) approach cannot possibly succeed, even if we suppose it could work, “then indeed everything would be explained, traced back to its source, and finally even reduced to an operational formula… but all content of the phenomenon would also vanish, leaving only empty form. That which appears would be reduced to the way in which it appears, and this how must also be something knowable a priori, and therefore entirely dependent on the subject, and therefore existing only for the subject, and therefore in the end merely illusion, merely representation, always the form of representation. To ask about the thing-in-itself is impossible.” (§24: 182)
Let me make a brief digression here, because Schopenhauer also mentions it here: what does “materialism” mean? Is everything matter? Then what does “matter” mean? In fact, there is a major conceptual sleight of hand hidden here! In fact, what we moderns call “matter” is really “form”! We know that in Aristotle’s doctrine of the four causes, efficient cause and final cause can be subsumed under form, but matter—hylē, that is, material—is sharply distinguished from form. For Aristotle, matter is “imperceptible and unknowable,” because what we can clearly conceptualize is form, and form is precisely not matter. In the *Metaphysics*, Aristotle says: “By matter I mean that which in itself is neither a this, nor of a certain quantity, nor any of the other determinations by which being is defined.” (*Metaphysics*, 1029a20; here I am following the translation in *The Idea of Nature*.) But in modern science, “matter” is exactly reversed, becoming “any thing that has mass and can be perceived and measured” (The Hutchinson Dictionary of Ideas, p. 305). Through this marvellous sleight of hand, modern science’s “materialism” is actually “formalism”: under the banner of “matter,” it evacuates everything substantive, leaving only empty form behind. This is just as Schopenhauer evaluates it.
Schopenhauer then reiterates (this has already come up many times in §17; the analogy on p. 149 is quite interesting) that by such an approach we can never truly “understand” any phenomenon. Even if we can describe the how of phenomena with precision, we still never understand why they are as they are. Schopenhauer says that “to think that the most frequent, most universal, and simplest phenomena are those we [can] best understand is a huge and widespread mistake; for these phenomena are merely the ones we encounter most often. We are ignorant of them, but have grown so accustomed to them that we no longer seek understanding [of them]. [In fact], a stone falling to the ground is just as inexplicable as the movement of an animal.” Here Schopenhauer hits the nail on the head: those who feel “satisfied” with materialist explanations have not achieved understanding at all; they have merely become “used to it”!
Let me make another brief digression. Some time ago I thought of a parable, and it happens to serve as a note to Schopenhauer here: imagine a tribe that originally lived near the equator and migrated north. The first time they saw water freezing into ice, they would obviously feel astonished and perplexed; they could not understand how this phenomenon happened, and perhaps they would attribute the power that made water freeze to some deity or spirit, and so on. But after the tribe settled there for many years, after several generations, the ancestors’ experience would have long since been forgotten. The newly born children would grow up from childhood in a world covered with ice and snow, and one can imagine that, apart from a few surviving old legends, they would no longer think of the wonder of ice and snow, but would take water freezing into ice as a matter of course. Perhaps they would already know under what conditions water freezes and be able to use ice to serve them. But when, exactly, would they have understood that original question that once shocked them so deeply—why can water freeze into ice? They never understood that original question. They grasped the “how” but never the “why,” yet they forgot to pursue the answer because they had “grown used to it.”
The course of modern science is similar. When those natural forces first “appeared,” people also marvelled at them and could not make sense of them. Newton, for example, has a famous saying—“I frame no hypotheses”—and it was directed precisely at the essence of “gravity.” He felt utterly bewildered by the source of “force.” But modern people seem no longer bewildered. Not only do they no longer attempt to frame hypotheses, they also use the concept of “force” as if it were entirely self-evident, without any further attempt to understand it. Yet in fact, as Schopenhauer points out, human understanding of the essence of this world has never made the slightest progress.
So how is it possible to go beyond appearance, beyond form, and thereby touch the world’s essence? Schopenhauer had already said in §18: 150 that if a human being were merely a knowing subject, then there would be no chance. But a human being also has a “body.” Only through the body as the direct objectivity of will can one “experience” the power of will. In §21 he said that, through the body, one can recognize that the essence of one’s own phenomenon is one’s will; this is “the key to knowing the innermost essence of the entire natural world” (§21: 164).
Here Schopenhauer once again displays this key. He points out that apart from my own body, I can know of all things only their side as representation: “Only by comparing what happens within me when a motive moves me and my body executes an action, by comparing that inner essence of my own change, determined by an external ground, can I gain an understanding of how inorganic bodies change according to causes, and thus come to grasp what their inner essence is.” (§24: 185) “One must learn to understand causality, in its inner meaning, from the law of motivation.” (§24: 186)
Schopenhauer then quotes Spinoza (§24: 186), who says that if a stone thrown into the air had consciousness, it would think that it was flying by its own will; what is called character in a human being is called nature in a stone, and the two are the same thing. The difference is only that this will has the lowest degree of visibility in the stone, whereas in man its visibility is strongest.
By the end of §24, Schopenhauer confidently says that he has “sufficiently proved” and “made clear” that “the thing-in-itself is will” (§25: 188). What follows is a more concrete discussion of how the objectification of will appears, and related matters. It is worth emphasizing here that when he says he has “sufficiently proved” this, he does not mean proof in the scientific sense. Certainty about the “will” in a stone is similar to certainty about another person’s will: it is gained through some kind of sympathy or immediate apprehension, but it cannot be rigorously demonstrated. If someone were to claim that only I have will or mind, while everyone else is illusion, that would be something impossible ever to refute. Schopenhauer’s suggestion is to send such people to a psychiatric hospital for treatment rather than engage them in philosophical debate.
The next section, §25, is short. It mainly says that the objectification of will has infinitely many grades, and that each fixed and unchanging grade is precisely Plato’s Idea. Schopenhauer also gives a preview here, saying that the relevant questions will be examined in detail in the next part.
§26 is about one natural force, that is, one grade of the objectification of will. The lower the grade, the less individuality is manifested in it; the lowest grade of the objectification of will appears as the most universal natural force.
It is worth noting that here Schopenhauer repeatedly restates that “the primitive natural forces themselves, as the immediate objectification of will, and will as thing-in-itself, are all independent of the principle of sufficient reason” (§26: 197, 192, 199, 201, etc.). In other words, “will” lies beyond space and time, and is therefore eternal and unified; “force” lies beyond the chain of causality. The cause of an individual phenomenon is not “force” but always another individual phenomenon, while all individual changes are the manifestation of force. Natural law is the relation of the Idea (natural force) to the form of its phenomenon. (§26: 196) “There is nothing in the world whose fundamental, total existence has some cause; there is only a cause for its being here just now, in this place.” (§26: 201)
The intention of §26 is made explicit in §27—“all these considerations on natural force and its phenomena have made clear how far an explanation from causes can go, and where it must stop” (§27: 202). §27 discusses in detail etiology, that is, the limits and duties of science. “The duty of etiology is to find the causes of all phenomena in nature; … and then to reduce the phenomena, whose forms may in many cases be quite complex, … to the primitive forces of nature, while at the same time … (distinguishing the relation between force and phenomenon) …” (§27: 202)
Like Kant, Schopenhauer believes that only by clearly defining its limits and duties can science develop more freely. Philosophy (metaphysics) should not encroach on science; for example, “it is impermissible to forgo a physical explanation and instead appeal to the objectification of will or to God’s creative power. Physics requires causes, and will is by no means a cause.” (§27: 203) Schopenhauer points out that “‘natural’ etiology and the ‘natural’ philosophy of nature by no means damage one another, but rather consider the same object from different standpoints, in parallel, without conflict.” (§27: 204) The aim of science is not to reduce the higher grades of the objectification of will to the lower grades (§27: 207), nor to deny away all the different grades of “force” until only one remains (§27: 206). In short, since “force” is not a “cause,” this reductionist path is fundamentally mistaken.
The reason reductionism seems effective is that there do in fact exist certain relations among the different grades of the objectification of will, and these relations ensure their similarity. Schopenhauer says: “One can indeed point to traces of various physical and chemical processes in organisms, but one must by no means explain organisms through these traces; for organisms are not phenomena produced by the unified action of these forces, and thus not phenomena produced accidentally; rather, they are a higher Idea that subdues the lower Ideas through an overwhelming process of assimilation…” (§27: 211)
This “subduing” occurs in the conflict and struggle among several phenomena, whereby one higher phenomenon absorbs all the others “yet realizes all of these phenomena at a higher level in its upward impulse” (§27: 210).
And in this layer upon layer of struggle and subjugation, human beings are the final victors—“for man subdues all other species and regards nature as a product for his use.” (§27: 213)
In this process of ascending by layers, “the objectification of the will becomes ever more evident at each higher grade” (§27: 216). At the lower levels, in the inorganic world, the will appears as “blind impulse and unconscious striving” (§27: 216), until at its highest level the will is given the “auxiliary tool” of “knowledge” (§27: 217), thereby kindling for itself a lamp of light (§27: 218). This ultimately enables human beings to stand above all things.
Schopenhauer’s claim is that “knowledge, fundamentally speaking, … is originally all produced by the will itself. As merely an auxiliary tool, an ‘apparatus.’ Knowledge, like any organ of the body, is also one of the tools for sustaining the existence of the individual and the species … Knowledge is originally destined to serve the will.” Schopenhauer is called a pessimist largely for this reason. But here Schopenhauer offers a preview, indicating that human knowledge may escape this bondage, move toward freedom, and in turn affect the will; that is a matter for later.
In §28, Schopenhauer proposes that “only by recognizing the unity and singularity of the will as thing-in-itself can one provide a true explanation of that miraculous, unfailing resemblance among all the products of nature, that kinship-like affinity.” In short, what Schopenhauer is doing here is offering an account of the unity and harmony of the natural world. Here Schopenhauer first introduces teleology. “Human beings need animals for their own survival, and animals in turn need another kind of animal, and then also plants; plants also need soil, moisture … In the final analysis, all this arises because the will must feed its own ravenous appetite with itself.” (§28: 222)
Schopenhauer says: “If we are willing to think it through, the will, in that original activity of its objectification, inputs and determines the different Ideas in which it objectifies itself; and these Ideas are precisely the different forms of the various products of nature; and since the objectification of the will belongs to these forms, these forms must also, in the phenomenon, have mutual relations with one another; then, … we must assume a universal mutual adaptation and mutual accommodation among all the phenomena belonging to one and the same will.” (§28: 229) And since the Ideas are outside time, phenomena are mutually adapted to one another in relation to the environment, to phenomena earlier in time, and to phenomena later in time.
Finally, §29 first reexamines the preceding discussion. It then especially reminds us to note that the whole of the will’s desiring is without purpose and without end. For the law of motivation is also part of the law of sufficient reason, and therefore can only point out a ground and reason for phenomena, for individual things, but can never point out any ground or reason for the will itself. (§29: 234)
October 24, 2007, 5:05 a.m.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply